Dystopia: Cyberpunk mod seeks modelers & artists

[Teddy]

http://dystopia-mod.com/

Team Dystopia, an all Australian development team, are proud to announce we are working on a Half Life 2 modification entitled; Dystopia.

Taking the vivid imagery of the cyberpunk genre, with obvious influences from such classics as Snowcrash, Neuromancer and Shadowrun, and melding the gritty future themes with fast and furious team based, objective style game play.

Dystopia will place players into a world of two sides; the punks and the corporate mercenaries. The punks are street samurai and slum dwellers who are waging a guerilla war against the faceless multinational corporations which have risen to over throw the corrupt governments we currently know.

Players select one of three cybernetic upgrade classes, choose implants to give them the skills and abilities required by their chosen role and to suit their desired play style. Such roles include; scout, hacker, heavy weapons, sniper, grunt and medic.

Team Dystopia are a collection of avid gamers who are looking for a few more talented artists to fill in the following roles;
2 x Character Modelers
4 x Props/weapons Modelers
2 x Texture artists/skinners

If you're interested, please register on our forums;
http://dystopia-mod.com/forum/

..or drop into our IRC channel;
#dystopia on irc.ausirc.net

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Such roles include; scout, hacker, heavy weapons, sniper, grunt and medic.

So you're remaking TFC then, yeah?

 

[ComradeBadger]

Plus Cyberpunk has to be the most overused mod genre in this generation of ideas...

 

[Teddy]

Firstly, thanks for your responses guys.. tho i sense that most of you are already working on other mods... anyways, in answer to your questions:

So you're remaking TFC then, yeah?

Not quite, although many of our team members are avid fans of QuakeWorld TF & Quake 3 Fortress.. however it's our dynamic class system (you can create your own class, depending on what implants you select) that makes our classes different from the TeamFortress range. The classes I listed were just to give people an idea of what's possible. Think of our game more like Custom TF, where you'll not often see the same class used twice in a game! Sorry I am being so tight lipped with the details here, but I really can't give anything away at this early stage.

No, looks more like a clone of Devastation to me--same deal though.

Mabey in terms of genre, but that's not what we're about.. our game is designed for clan-play and online competitions, not just deathmatch with eyecandy. Devastation's multiplayer seems to consist of DeathMatch, Team DeathMatch and CTF, which is a little limited in terms of the modern day tactical team-based first person shooter.. we aim to provide a lot more in terms of gameplay! That's not to say we don't have eyecandy, our art team is quite good too!

Plus Cyberpunk has to be the most overused mod genre in this generation of ideas...

Hey, that's not our fault! We've been working on this mod for nearly 10 months now, from a design doc that was written 5 years ago... just a little misfortunate that hl2 seems to lend itself to cyberpunk mods, i dunno. I hope we have something different to offer our players than the other cyberpunk mods out there.


Thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread guys, back to get back on topic: are there any decent modelers out there?

 

[dys-Fuzzy]

Just to clear up one thing in Ted's orginal post; Team Dystopia is currently an all Aussie mod team, but we're not going to turn away potential members who aren't located in our great southern land.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, the issue of originality of themes is a pretty hot topic in the modding scene. It's a crowded market and there's a lot of people who are being influenced by the same sources.

 

[Teddy]

Thanks Pendragon, I do it for the love of the game

Our implants system is fairly well balanced, with each of the 3 different TBC (Total Body Conversion) levels having different amounts of implant space, so the slower heavier players (who have more firepower) can only fit basic implants, where as the lighter players (who have more speed) can fit advanced implants and choose a specalist role. I can't really say much more than this (Fuzzy would kill me!) but believe it or not, we've already released an internal alpha and have had a few Development LANs in which much testing & balancing has taken place.

Although this feature isn't really unique, we have a lot of features that are.. however, in order to keep them unique, we have to keep them secret. Sorry!

And the 5 year old design doc.. needless to say its been reviewed and rewritten every few days, but essentially it's a fantastic idea that we haven't had the technology (nor the skilled and dedicated team) to do until now!

At the end of the day, we're aiming for fun and challenging gameplay above all else, and unfortunatley you just can't explain that so easily in words, so you'll just have to trust me!

 

[The Dark Elf]

we've already released an internal alpha and have had a few Development LANs in which much testing & balancing has taken place.

How'd you do that when the game isn't available?

 

[Teddy]

Using Half Life 1 (as stated on our website). It's been a surprising good platform for our testing, and seeing as valve have said the code is easy to port to hl2, i'm surprised more mods aren't doing it.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Using Half Life 1 (as stated on our website). It's been a surprising good platform for our testing, and seeing as valve have said the code is easy to port to hl2, i'm surprised more mods aren't doing it.

a lot of mods are doing that, hope Valve hasn't changed its mind about the compatibility or there will be lots of annoyed faces

 

[dys-Fuzzy]

Even if Valve do slip from their promises of easy porting from hl1 to hl2, working in hl1 has at least got us rolling. As I'm sure everyone here on the modding forums knows, sitting around waiting for an sdk isn't any fun or helpful to a project.

Ted's been coding his fingers to the bone, yes it'll be frustrating if porting this work to the hl2 sdk proves difficult..... but currently there's not a lot of options. As Ted mentioned, we've had this design doc knocking around for nearly 5 years waiting for an engine which makes our ideas possible. While we can lay ground work in hl1 there are a lot of features which we'll only be able to make progress on when the hl2 sdk is released.

 

[The Dark Elf]

There's still plenty that can be done without having the SDK in your hands.

Can get all the modeling, texturing, sound and music done for a start, then simply convert to the correct formats later on.

Aswell as map concepts to make sure every map built is going to be perfect. People are relying on the SDK far too much and assuming its the holy grail and they can't do anything without it, which is just an excuse.

 

[Shinobi]

chances are valve will totally break code compatibility, which is a good thing, I hate legacy code


our team made an HL1 version of the mod we're working on,, not so much to test the gameplay,, but to see how well we work together as a team,, it helped quite a bit in refining our team

 

[The Dark Elf]

chances are valve will totally break code compatibility, which is a good thing, I hate legacy code


our team made an HL1 version of the mod we're working on,, not so much to test the gameplay,, but to see how well we work together as a team,, it helped quite a bit in refining our team

Yeah I agree, legacy code is fine for some things, 3D apps for example (nobody wants to buy a $900 plugin only to find it doesn't work with the next software update) But something like Source I'd be fine about it. HL1 resources in Source would be like using a porsche just to drive to the shops and back.

 

[dys-Fuzzy]

Fenric, yep.. that's pretty much what we're up to, as I hope you can see over on our Dystopia website. We're making good progress in all areas of our development, however we've come to a point where our mappers require a large amount of props to flesh out their maps (which are currently being built for hl1).

Which is where this request for eager, active artists comes in.

Pendragon, your interest is taken as a real compliment. After having a browse through your game design docs that you've written I know I've found a kindred spirit. I've been a design maniac for a while now, producing many docs for a variety of genres. I'm very tempted to take you up on the offer of a bit of a provate chat regarding Dystopia, but right now we're happy flying a little under the radar and confident that our design and direction are unique and complete.

Definately expect a pm in the near future, perhaps to have a look over our next major information release before it goes live. Advice at that stage would be greatly welcomed.

As for code compatability worries, I think that taking the positive guess that the majority of work done now will port across is the only way to progress right now. Even if we have to throw it all away the testing of the fundimental, underlying ideas ideas for Dystopia using hl1 has been worth it. On top of this, as Shinobi mentioned, if nothing else it's allowed us to get our entire team up and running like a well oiled machine.....

While we're as eager as the next mod team to get our hands on the hl2 sdk, we're not just going to sit around waiting. Like Fenric pointed out, there's lots we're able to work on right now.

If only we had a few more top knotch artists

 

[Teddy]

just to get back on topic.. are there any modelers out there?

we haven't had one response from this ad yet



...looks like we'll just have to poach more artists from the industry!